“Miral,” Julian Schnabel’s fourth feature film, based on an autobiographical novel by Rula Jebreal (who wrote the screenplay), recounts the linked and partial life stories of four Palestinian women, beginning in the last days of the British mandate and ending in the 1990s, when it looked as if peace between Israelis and Palestinians might finally be on the horizon. That the film, an international co-production involving France, India, Israel and Italy, has been greeted with a flurry of controversy may show just how far that horizon has receded.
Accusations of a pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli bias on Mr. Schnabel’s part are further evidence that the discussion of Middle East politics may be more polarized and poisonous than ever. To the extent that “Miral” espouses an ideology, it is the tolerant, somewhat wistful humanism that is the default setting of Western liberalism. The film concludes on a note of cautious optimism, with the signing of the Oslo Accords, and while embracing that agreement may be naïve or nostalgic, it hardly seems offensive or even especially provocative.
But to say that Mr. Schnabel’s film is innocuous is not to say that it’s any good. Like so many other well-intentioned movies about politically contentious issues, it is hobbled by its own sincerity and undone by a confused aesthetic agenda. A grand, complex human drama is reduced to platitudes and pretty pictures, as some fine actors become ciphers of suffering and resilience in a strained and superficial pageant.
This is especially disappointing given that Mr. Schnabel’s great gift as a filmmaker has always been his ability to infuse real-life narratives with color, surprise and vivid emotion. All of his movies have been based on the lives of real people, but none of the films have succumbed to the wooden literalism of the conventional Hollywood biopic. “Basquiat,” about the reckless and brilliant young painter who had been a friend of Mr. Schnabel’s, was at once a pop parable and a knowing, mischievous art-world satire. “Before Night Falls,” with Javier Bardem as the Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, turned a grim story of oppression into a sexy, lyrical fable. And in “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” Mr. Schnabel took the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French magazine editor paralyzed by a stroke, and transformed it into an ecstatic exploration of sensory liberation.
The common thread running through these stories, and “Miral” as well, is the conflict between confining circumstances and the innate human desire for freedom. Miral (Freida Pinto), a young Arab woman growing up in Jerusalem during the first intifada of the 1980s, is embroiled in this struggle on a number of fronts. Her protective father (Alexander Siddig) wants her to stay away from political activism, as does Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass), director of the orphanage and girls’ school where Miral has spent much of her childhood. Her defiance of them is normal adolescent rebellion played out against a backdrop of turmoil.
Miral’s story is the last and longest of four chapters that make up the film, each one bearing the name of a woman. Nadia (Yasmine Al Massri) is Miral’s mother, who flees an abusive home only to wind up in an Israeli prison, where she meets Fatima (Ruba Blal), serving several life sentences for an abortive act of terrorism. Encompassing all of them is the story of Hind, a remarkable real-life figure in Palestinian history, here unfortunately reduced to stiff, self-effacing saintliness.
Some of the fault lies with Ms. Jebreal’s script, which consists almost entirely of rousing thematic statements: “You are my hope,” “We must continue the struggle,” “This is a difficult period of transition,” and so on. The awkwardness of the dialogue reaches an apex of absurdity when Miral and her boyfriend, a militant named Hani (Omar Metwally), debate the relative merits of a two-state solution between passionate kisses. The problem is not that love and politics don’t mix — of course they do! — but rather that people don’t generally sound as if they were quoting from the letters section of Foreign Affairs while they’re making out.
What is worse is that the historical particulars of the story are sacrificed to Mr. Schnabel’s restless, preening stylishness. His camera movements are gorgeous, and the colors and textures produced by the cinematographer, Eric Gautier, are rarely less than ravishing. But the compulsive pursuit of beauty — and of beauties — makes “Miral” feel like an epic perfume commercial.
There are a few moments that catch the pulse of experience in ways that match the excitement of Mr. Schnabel’s earlier work, notably a series of encounters between Miral and a Jewish Israeli woman (played by Mr. Schnabel’s daughter Stella) who is dating one of Miral’s cousins. For the most part, though, the film combines flat-footed storytelling with florid and distracting technique, producing more bafflement than catharsis or illumination. (For a successful marriage of Palestinian history and cinematic ingenuity, see “The Time That Remains,” Elia Suleiman’s extraordinary family chronicle, which had a brief theatrical run this year.)
In the final scenes, jarringly and inexplicably, images of a funeral are accompanied by Tom Waits singing “All the World Is Green” on the soundtrack. (Other music in the film, almost as distracting, is by Laurie Anderson, A. R. Rahman and Ennio Morricone.) It may be possible to imagine such a juxtaposition making sense, but like so much else in “Miral,” this musical choice seems hasty, half-baked and arbitrary. And the movie as a whole feels like a noble effort that falls short of figuring out just what it wants to do.
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